Biglaw

Top 50 Biglaw Firm Postpones The Official Reopening Of Its Offices Until 2022

Is this a trend in the making?

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Hour by hour, as billable time ticks away, Biglaw leaders have an important decision to make. Will they further postpone their planned office reopenings due to the hyper-contagious Delta variant of COVID-19? By all accounts, it’s looking more and more like the answer is a resounding “yes.” But just how far out are some firms willing to delay their return to the office?

Maybe things will be better next year.

Perkins Coie, for example, has its sights set on a January 2022 reopening. Attorneys and staff were originally supposed to return to the office on October 4. Instead, the top 50 Am Law firm will join the small handful of other firms that will forgo office life for all of 2021. These firms include Cahill, Cooley, Sanford Heisler, and Willkie.

A spokesman offered the firm’s reasoning to Bloomberg: “Our goal remains to protect the health and safety of all our attorneys and professional staff, while ensuring continuity of service to our clients.” For the time being, those who do enter any Perkins Coie office must be vaccinated (effective October 1) and masked.

Which firm will be the next to put off its return to the office until next year? With the way things are going, it might be a good idea….

Help us help you. Let us know what your firm is doing to protect employees and adjust to the new normal during this unprecedented moment in time.

As soon as you find out about the reopening plan at your firm, please email us (subject line: “[Firm Name] Office Reopening”) or text us at (646) 820-8477. We always keep our sources on stories anonymous. There’s no need to send a memo (if one exists) using your firm email account; your personal email account is fine. If a memo has been circulated, please be sure to include it as proof; we like to post complete memos as a service to our readers. You can take a photo of the memo and attach as a picture if you are worried about metadata in a PDF or Word file. Thanks.

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Perkins Coie Says Lawyers, Staff Can Stay Home Rest of Year (1) [Bloomberg Law]

Staci ZaretskyStaci Zaretsky is a senior editor at Above the Law, where she’s worked since 2011. She’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to email her with any tips, questions, comments, or critiques. You can follow her on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.

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